News and blog

Welcome to our 2017 CSA spring/summer season. The farm crew (Chip and Dayton) and I have been busy the past 2 months doing everything possible, weather permitting, to get the season off to a good start. Even with current rash of thunderstorms we feel the farm is off to a good start. Even though the recent weather has delayed a few crops we had hoped to have in your first CSA share we feel we have a good bounty of fresh greens and few other treats to get things started out.

For those of you who may be new to our CSA or any CSA for that matter, you will find that your weekly share will be very seasonal. We strive to provide as much variety as possible each week, and to fill your shares as if it was coming from your own garden. We will always push the limit to bring you fresh produce that is in season for our region. The season will change throughout the 20 weeks of your CSA. Starting with lots of greens like lettuce, spinach, salad mixes, radishes, green onions, and braising greens. As warmer weather and daylight allow you will start seeing more items like carrots, beets, cabbage, and broccoli. Warmer weather will bring on summer squash, tomatoes, pepper and egg plant, green beans, and potatoes. The end of summer will bring on fall type crops like sweet potatoes, onions, and a return of many of the spring crops like salad mixes, beets, and carrots. We also strive to plant many crops in succession throughout the season in order to keep up with variety.

In this week’s share:

Spring Lettuce Mix. This is a mix of several types of leaf lettuces great for a salad, or using on sandwiches. We triple wash all of our greens and you will find them very clean and ready to use.

Red Stem Spinach. A vary versatile spinach that can be eaten in a salad, sautéed, used on pizza, in soup, pasta or omelet.

Poc Choi . Some call it Chinese Cabbage but it is not like the cabbage we know here in the states. Poc Choi is great steamed, sautéed’, braised, or used in a stir fry. There are many recipes on line but I like to lightly sautéed’ or steam it with some chopped onion and garlic, salt, and pepper. The stem is very edible and I believe the best part.

Radishes. Great addition to a fresh salad, eaten raw, or roasted. Most people don’t know that the radish tops are edible. Great sauted’ or in a stir fry.

Pea Shoots. Good to garnish a salad with, used in stir fry’s, or just for grazing. See our website for a good stand alone pea shoot salad.

Has it really been 24 weeks since we started this season’s CSA back in May? That’sright this is week 24 the final week of the 2016 Season. At times I feel like it flew by quickly, but to be honest there are always those times in the middle of the season that I wonder if we are going to make it but make it we did and every season must come to an end. I hope all members have enjoyed this year’s CSA and will plan on signing up next spring (please tell a friend or relative about us). I want to personally thank all of you for supporting our small local farm. As I have said before it’s our CSA members that give us the drive and motivation throughout the season to do what we do.

For those members that took advantage of the vacation week option, your last share will be next week. I or Chip will be confirming with you when you pick your share up this week.

Many have asked if we were going to offer a fall - winter CSA this year. Unfortunately we will not. At one point I felt like we would be in good shape to do so but the late summer rains and humidity had ill affects on most of our winter storage crops. We will however be at the farmers markets throughout November (outside downtown Bloomington) and also the Bloomington Winter Farmers Market at Harmony School starting the first Saturday of December and running through March. Please drop by and see Chip or Dayton. We will have plenty of the freshest winter greens, carrots, and mushrooms that you have ever eaten. CSA members from this past season will always receive a 10% or more discount on any purchases made at the farmers markets.

The transition into fall and winter continues on the farm. The green leaves on the trees are gradually turning colors. The farmers in nearby fields are beginning their harvest of soy beans and corn. On the farm we continue to harvest sweet potatoes, potatoes, and plant winter greens. We have many preparations to do before cold weather hits. We have not yet replaced the plastic that was torn off one of the greenhouses what seems to be way back in July. Also the hoop house that was damaged in an April storm has yet to be put back together. Both will need to be done in the next couple of weeks in order for us to grow in them this winter. And let’s not forget about planting garlic, a fairly large undertaking. All in all, I think the transition is going well and we have a few weeks of good weather yet to get it done.

In this week’s shares: Arugula - a great fall and spring salad green (see this week’s recipe for arugula /kale salad). Fall Kale (see this week’s recipe for Kale/Arugula pesto). Green Bell Peppers great for a stuffed bell pepper recipe. Butternut Squash. Some shares will receive Carrots while others will receive Beets. A great fall bounty that can be used in so many fall recipes. Enjoy, Jim

We have had another great weather week. The working conditions have been perfect for the field work we have been performing this week. We had about an inch of rain last Friday night into Saturday and that did delay a few items early in the week. Chip and I have been working alone this week as Dayton is off on his Honeymoon. Congratulations to Dayton and his Bride. They were married this past Saturday.

Chip and I have had two primary concerns this week on the farm. The first one being to prep the growing beds for winter seeding. The seeding has been started this week and will continue for the next 2 weeks. The other concern has been to finish the potato harvest and start the sweet potato harvest. The ground proved too wet again to harvest potatoes this is concerning because I am worried about them starting to rot or sprout in the ground. We were able to harvest half the sweet potatoes and the yield is very good. Sweet potatoes need to cure at a high temperature and high humidity for at least a week. We converted one of our walk in coolers into a ‘cure room’ by adding a space heater and humidifier. This curing process turns the starches in the sweet potato to sugar, a very important step for sweet potato storage and edibility. With only a few weeks left in this season’s CSA we hope to get the sweet potatoes cured in order to put a hefty portion of them in your last share. We continue to have a lot of loss in our winter squashes this year. A high percentage of them are rotting in storage. We have found some that have a worm in them that we are not familiar with while others just seem to go bad. I feel most of the problem has to do with the late summer rain and humidity since most of the squash lay in direct contact with the soil until harvested. None the less we do have quite a few butternut squash that seem to be holding up. We anticipated having fall carrots and beets in the shares this week but they just not quite there yet. I’m pretty sure they will be good to go next week. Less sunlight and cooler temperatures have slowed the growing a bit.

In your shares: Shiitake Mushrooms are back; we are continuing to have good success with growing them. Check out this week recipe for Cream Mushroom Sauce also I added an info flier with some facts about Shiitakes and their health benefits. Also in your share this week will be Purple Bok Choy (great for a stir fry or lightly sautéed), Lettuce Mix and Acorn Squash. If you have not tried roasted stuffed Acorn Squash check out the recipe on our website. The mushrooms would be perfect to add to the filling. Enjoy, Jim

It’s been great to experience the fall like weather this past week. Our new greenhouse is great. It went together without a hitch. The guys from Nifty Hoops out of Michigan did a fantastic job and Chip, Dayton, and I enjoyed working with them and doing something different for a change. The farm has taken on a new look in part due to the new greenhouse and in part to the progress we are making mowing, weeding, and cleaning up of old garden plots. We are also working on winter plots getting them ready for seeding. That always brings a nice tidy look to the farm. Timing is critical with winter growing. We only have a small 3 week window in October to seed our winter greens. There are no do-overs. The ground gets too cold for proper germination by late October and early November. Needless to say, September and October are 2 of the busiest months on the farm. As busy as we are it is still some of the more enjoyable times for me working the farm. The weather is cooler, we can see the daily transition from summer to fall to winter with the trees changing and corn and bean fields turning from green to golden brown. Almost daily we will see wild turkeys crossing the fields, gorging themselves on grasshoppers and other insects. Deer are popping their heads out the woods more often and can be seen early in the morning and a few hours before nightfall. Soon we will have most of the larger garden fields cleared of weeds and rubble and the fields put to bed for winter.

In this week’s share: All the makings of a hearty fall soup! You will receive a nice bunch of Leeks perfect for potato leek soup, Potatoes, Kale (see this week’s recipe for potato kale soup), Mesclun Salad Mix, and Radishes (don’t forget that the radish tops are edible ad very good in a stir fry or salad)

By the time you are reading this we hope to have a new 30’x96’ high tunnel built. We are erecting it on Wed. Hopefully we will be able to share some pictures with you sometime soon. There’s not much else to report on from the farm this week as this project has been all consuming. The 3.5” of rain we received on Saturday pretty much put a damper on any farming that needed done early in the week. I hope to have more to report on next week.

Fall is in the air. The working conditions on the farm have been much improved the last couple of weeks. With fall we are also able to see the change in some of the crops. Seed germination is much improved and we are seeing some of the more vibrant colors returning to the salad greens brought on by the cool nights. With the bringing in of the new season we also see the end of the past season. Tomatoes and peppers are just about gone. Green beans a few more weeks. We continue to dig potatoes, sweet potatoes, and harvest winter squash for storage into the winter season. On the farm we are definitely now in winter grow mode.

Within the next week we will be adding a new high tunnel (greenhouse) to the farm. This new structure will be the largest yet on our farm. I have a very strong passion for growing fresh vegetables during the winter months and this new high tunnel will increase our winter growing capacity by more than 30%. High tunnels are also used during the summer months for more of the heat loving crops with the controlled environment producing higher quality crops compared to the same crops that are field grown. September and October are very busy times on our four season farm but this year we will be pulling double duty in order to have this high tunnel built and keep up with the usual fall and winter preparations.

A few weeks ago I reported that we had begun growing Shiitake Mushrooms on the farm. I’m excited to announce that so far so good. Even though we are in a steep learning curve we have had some early successes. We have had much success in growing the mushrooms and sales at the market have been good. All that being said we will be sharing a few mushrooms with our CSA members this week.

In the shares: A good mix of seasons past, upcoming seasons, and new. A tomato or two (just about done). Fall Leeks (see this week’s recipe for Potato Leek Soup), German Gold Potatoes (again see the recipe). Okra (out with the summer season). Salad Mix (a good mix of lettuces and other fall greens). The new “Shiitake Mushrooms” (a good sample great for omelets, homemade pizza, or mushroom sauce).

I hope everyone got some rest and relaxation over the Labor Day weekend. Chip, Dayton, and I all took advantage of the long weekend for some time away from farming. It was a much needed break. It seems even with the short work week we are making some headway in cleaning up some of the garden plots and growing fields. Chip and Dayton have been concentrating on transplanting some fall and winter kale and working hard on harvesting winter squash. I have been primarily mowing grassy areas and preparing and seeding some late fall greens, beets, and radishes. I sure hope we are done with the 90 degree days. We have had a little difficulty with germination of some of our fall crops due to the fluctuating weather from mild to extreme hot. Most cool weather crops require lower germination temperatures. All and all it has been a pretty good week on the farm despite the heat and humidity. It’s always exciting to see the winter storage crops being harvested and brought into the barn. Even though our squash did not produce the quantities we had hoped for it seems we have a fair amount of high quality squashes. We will finish up the squash harvest and it will be on to harvesting the remaining potatoes and sweet potatoes that are in the ground. It appears the sweet potato crop did well. We’ll know better once we start digging them up. I keep telling myself fall is almost here. This year it can’t come soon enough.

In your shares this week: A few tomatoes (we actually had some field tomatoes that produced a few late ones), a sprig or 2 of Basil (enough for a tomato salad), Green Beans, Sweet Bell Pepper assortment, Sweet Potatoes (we dug these a few weeks ago and let them cure, they should be very tasty).

There’s not much new to report from the farm this week. We are continuing to try and get the fields cleaned up in order to do more fall planting and general maintenance but with more rain last Saturday and a few sprinkles here and there, it continues to be bothersome. Somehow, some way, we have been able to pull enough products together to fill the shares and have a little left for market. Late August and early September are always some of the more difficult times on the farm. Normally it’s from dry and hot conditions, this year it has obviously been from all the rain, humidity, and heat. All and all I think we’ll make it through it. We are starting to see some headway and have been able to start planting a few things this week. Fall is almost here and I can hardly wait.